Ask Lemmy

This has little if anything to do with being in a city, and more to do with how expensive a person's tastes are.

Making fun for oneself is easy if need are simple. I enjoy a walk with another human because I'd rather do that than go to a shitty steakhouse. I'll make art on a Saturday afternoon, or cook. There's always free events of all kinds just check the local promotion groups. Lots of local socializing and board game groups. Bird watching. Bike rides are effectively free, so is going for a picnic in an area you haven't been to.

Grab a ball and go to the park. Get some unsalted sunflower seeds at the dollar store and feed the chickadees. Hit the local Ultimate pick-up game. Go to a bar and *gasp* don't drink and just enjoy the live music. Hell if $20 is in the inventory, go to the pinball arcade for 2 hours.

You can have fun for $10K and you can have fun for $0, it's up to you.

Cities have a lot of free things like parks or such and even activities. Like they had weekly dancing in summer in parks in the evening or yoga in the morning. In addition in my city you could get passes to museums and zoos and such from the library for free if you are a resident. Oooh. The libraries are incredible to. Often there are groups that do interesting things to and universities are a good place to find some interesting things.

Anime, series, internet, comics, manga, and ofc music. Some casual games and literature, sometimes.

Also helps having a hobby like music production or 3D modeling, this is, all done on the computer ofc, outside of the computer there's no world, just a neverending roads and buildings and cars and stores and more of the same.

While not free, I find a membership or two to be advantageous. There’s usually member swaps where you can get in another local location for free for a month. When we go on vacations our first stop is always a grocery store, and I usually try to get an extended stay hotel with a kitchen. Saves on eating out because we’ll pack for lunch and make dinner. We have an amusement park pass that works with other locations so parking and admission is included. Our museum membership works for hundreds of other out of state museums so we visit science and children’s museums included. Vacations are still expensive of course but this reduces costs significantly.

Other than that things like parks, beaches, library events. Meet up with friends at someone’s house.

I spend a lot of time taking photos. There are apps that tell you what plants are. I also contribute to an app called StreetComplete which is like Pokemon Go but for filling out open source map data.

Hah, let me turn this around - what do you do for fun without a whole city to explore? Hike, swim in the creek/at the beach, BBQ with friends? Same here, we just do the first two in public places (parks, pools or community beach, etc)

There's lots of free public spaces in my area. But it's also just as easy to stay home in a big city.

Library and park?

I go to the park, visit friends, join clubs, do volunteer activities, play with pets, visit garden centers (just to look), walk along the river, etc.

I don’t live in a big city. But, disc golf generally isn’t expensive to get into. Really fun. If you can get around a bit to courses.

In my small country town where I live. I am miles from anything there is lovely parks that are free but I have to drive there. Anything I want to do at home I have to buy. In the city where I work my job gives me puppy days, baseball events, free massages etc etc. In walking distance from work and if I were to live in the luxury apartments near by I had a beer garden(free to hang out or relatively cheap to enter like 5$ a wrist band) in the beer garden we had corn hole and lots of bar games free to use. I have a riverwalk, an art museum, a real cheap dinosaur museum, and tons of public parks with movie events and local stargazing clubs etc also more pickup sports games since more people. In the city there is tons of 3rd places that let you hang out for an hour or more for less than $20 with tons of people.

At home it costs me 5$ in gas to drive anywhere and 15 mins to get to the closest thing and will cost me the same $20 in my rural town to hang out in my 3rd place with 0 young people or just the same 5 locals. If I have a hangout at home with stuff I purchased all my friends live 30 + mins away if I made plans to fit their schedule. My local parks are neat if I wanted to walk or do things solo or had a local friend group but that is lots of planning and no one is using the facilities normally. I think 1 local park has a movie night for Halloween once a year

Essentially the city has everything rural does in amenities but just more of them closer together so there is more free things and with more people there is more possible random fun if you are outgoing. Vs rural you have to plan your fun, travel further and have less access to more of everything. But if you have everything at your house and are more of introvert it is a bit better. One of the reasons Why people like to retire to the suburbs is they have access to alot of the city things they like but have just enough room to have all the things they want at home

I watch tv with my friends once a week 😎

Someone else already said "library and park". That's essentially right, but there's more.

My city does movies in the park all summer. There's a similar music in the park set of events. Both free.

We have pretty good biking trails (just don't try to commute by bike!).

Most of my friends are homeowners. We don't all host the same amount, but we regularly get together at each others' houses.

There's a free zoo and a free art museum here. Other museums charge for admission, but the tickets are decently cheap.

We have some sports in the area, but our teams aren't very trendy. I'm not sure what the pricing is like tbh.

There's a lot of live music at some of the bars in the area. I don't do a lot of this myself, but I think the cover was pretty minimal last time I went to one.

(OK, yes some of these things do cost money, but they're not super spendy if you have any sort of budget)

If you're a musician, look for open mics / open jams and try to make friends in the scene. Musician-organized diy events are cheap and fun. Especially punk events are cheap.
If you're interested in art, look for local diy group exhibitions and performances and ask if you can volunteer for support.
If you're into hacking/diy look for local repair cafes and ask to volunteer.
If you're into rpg go hang out in local game shops and find a group to play with.
It really depends on what you consider fun!

Walk in the city centre, the historical centre is always neat, but we do have parks, riverside and more

Free events (Traditional, art school/club, municipal fest)

Be member or whatever hobby club with a fixed (and affordable) yearly rate, or even informal hobby group like the runners who meet at the park entrance every Sunday morning

When I was younger I spent everything I earned on having fun, drinking heavily, sex and drugs and techno and all that good stuff. Now I'm older, I put it in a savings account and spend my free time reading, playing computer games, and gardening.

Walk around the city or hit up a park. Also sometimes friends host get togethers

I'm outside a big city. But there are tons of free things to do. Many places do free days for residents. We have lots of parks. There are street fairs you can go to, and while food and drinks cost money. You usually can walk around and listen to music for free.

We have beaches you can go to, libraries, friends houses.

Window shopping is always free.

Exercise of one form or another mostly. As far as the places you gotta pay for, learning where to stretch your dollar while getting the enjoyment and social interaction you're looking for is a time and experience thing and you gotta look to find them.

I certainly don't. Ain't anything free to do in this city except just walk around and experience the public. There aren't even any real dog parks here; nearest one is in another city 15 miles away. Best there is, is an indoor dog park that is also a bar and requires a fucking subscription.

When I lived in the city I was dead broke but had a great time. I hung out at the library, which was its own cool thing but also served as a community hub to let me know when the local Gurudwara was doing a luncheon, or when crafting clubs met, and having a library card also came with some museum passes. I learned about all sorts of cool, free goings on through my library.

There were also local attractions that had free days or days for locals, and there were street festivals nearby that had live music and performances. One of my favorite things about living in the city was hearing the sound of live music and walking out the door to go follow it to some cool, hitherto unknown to me event that was happening.

We also went ice skating on the pond in the park (free if you had your own skates), or went biking on bike paths. We built snow sculptures in public parks and gardens and just walked around exploring. There were lots of beautiful and interesting buildings and side streets where we could get pleasantly lost.

The key part of where I was is that it was walkable, and there were plenty of "third spaces". I understand not all cities have that. However, if you're in the US I highly recommend starting with your local library.

That's the ne- oh, you already meme'd that.

I guess that's one more reason why many people would rather scroll endlessly on social media, it's free*

Depending on the city you live at, the simplest solution would be to find a sports area and do sports there with others - basketball and football (soccer if you're 'murican) might be the most common and easy to find, as a good number of these are public and free to use